A trio of Jeffco Public Schools teachers share how they are keeping their students’ minds sharp from afar Reading, writing, arithmetic — remote.
Teachers and students have been faced this month with an abrupt disruption to their academic year in the face of a global pandemic that silenced school bells and emptied out classrooms across the country.
In Colorado, teachers in the Jeffco Public Schools district were among the first to make the unprecedented leap from classroom instruction to teaching students scattered across the county. cooped up in their homes in a bid to slow the spread of the highly contagious new coronavirus.
Many only had one day to prepare for the switch, but they forged on, transforming their homes into makeshift classrooms and inventing lesson plans and procedures they hope will keep their students’ minds nimble.
The transition has been trying, so The Denver Post is spotlighting the efforts of a trio of Jeffco teachers who’ve been particularly innovative as they go about their duties from a distance.
Kristina McCombie, first-grade teacher
How does one remotely teach 24 first-graders who are still figuring out how to read, may not understand online education and don’t have the attention span of their older peers?
Kristina McCombie never dreamed of having to find out, but the pandemic-prompted closure of Wheat Ridge’s Stevens Elementary along with all schools across the state meant the daunting task was her new reality.
McCombie took some of the comforts of her classroom — colorful posters reminding students about greater than and less than, and a stuffed toy horse named Linus the kids usually pass around to signify who’s talking — and set them up in her dining-room-turned-learning-lab.
Many only had one day to prepare for the switch, but they forged on, transforming their homes into makeshift classrooms and inventing lesson plans and procedures they hope will keep their students’ minds